Allen Maniker M.D. Named Executive Director of ZviDance

New York based contemporary dance company, ZviDance, now in its 25th year, has appointed a new executive director, Allen Maniker M.D.

Until recently the Chairman of Neurosurgery at Mount Sinai Beth Israel and Professor of Neurosurgery at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Dr. Maniker will assume the role of Executive Director in June of this year after the successful tenure of the outgoing Nikki Chalas. Dr. Maniker holds a BFA in dance from Juilliard and formerly performed with Bat Dor of Israel, the Sophie Maslow Dance Company, and the Joyce Trisler DansCompany. He obtained his medical degree from Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan and completed his training in Neurosurgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. He will work with ZviDance and the Board of Directors to build and maintain its performance and fundraising agenda. Mr. Gotheiner, having just completed a Juilliard commission, as well as company performances at MassMoCA, and Pace University, will show the company at BAM, Jacobs Pillow, and the American Dance Festival in the coming months.

ZviDance brings its audiences a passionate vision of community in a modern age. A collaborative alliance among artists, the company's stirring work celebrates diversity by melding movement genres into the distinct dance vocabulary, which is provocative both in form and in subject matter. Led by Israeli-born Artistic Director Zvi Gotheiner, the company is shaped by a synergistic model of creation, involving the ensemble and designers from the initial research phase, pushing the methodology and ethics of a creation process within an interdisciplinary format.

UPCOMING EVENTS:- June 15 -20, 2016:CHAIRS at University of Washington- June 17, 2016: Chair Duet as part of the Wave Rising Series at 92Y Harkness Dance Center - July 18 - 24, 2016: Escher/Bacon/Rothko at Jacob's Pillow- Summer 2016: Zvi Gotheiner teaches at Impulstanz and Cullberg Ballet- September 9 - 10, 2016: World Premiere of On The Road, at American Dance Institute- November 30 - December 2, 2016: NY Premiere ofOn The Road as part of the Next Wave Festival at Brooklyn Academy of Music

"One does not just watch a dance by Zvi Gotheiner. One enters a world with its own internal logic, a sensual, organic world of movement, language, and images where one is pulled along by currents unseen and inevitable."Wendy Perron, Dance Magazine

"Zvi Gotheiner's choreography suggests that he is as much sociologist as dance-maker." Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times

In the last 24 years of existence, ZviDance has received critical praise and stable funding for its artistic projects. One of the company's signature works, DABKE, was recognized by The New York Times as one of Alastair Macaulay's TOP TEN DANCE FAVORITES OF 2013. The company performs frequently at home in such New York venues as the Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop and Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors. ZviDance has toured across North America to festivals such as Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival and The American Dance Festival, and abroad to Germany, Poland, Russia, Israel, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and Japan.

About Zvi Gotheiner, Artistic DirectorBorn and raised in a kibbutz in northern Israel, Zvi began his artistic career as a gifted violinist with the Young Kibbutzim Orchestra, where he attained the rank of soloist and Concertmaster at age 15. He began dancing at 17, and soon after, formed his first performance group. Zvi arrived in New York in 1978 on a dance scholarship from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and danced with the Joyce Trisler Dance Company, Feld Ballets/NY and Bat-Sheva Dance Company. After directing Tamar Ramle and the Jerusalem Tamar Dance Companies in Israel and the Israeli Chamber Dance Company in New York, he founded ZviDance.